The Hitachi Performa lowers the price bar, but many users will notice some of the compromises that were made along the way. Competing models around the same price offer more features and better quality.

It's the $900 street price that gets the Hitachi Performa CP-RS55 noticed. In a market where sub-$1,000 products aimed at home entertainment users were recently the hot news, a sub-$900 business projector will catch the attention of budget-minded buyers everywhere. But a bargain product is only a bargain if it gets the job done, and does it as well as or better than the competition. Unfortunately, the Performa fails to deliver a package equal to others in its price class.

The Performa has clearly been simplified to keep costs down. There is no optical zoom, which can be a nuisance because you will have to move the projector closer or further from the screen in order to get an image of the desired size. It only accepts an analog computer signal, and there is no provision for remote mouse control, which is essential when making presentations. Without it, you have to reach for the keyboard to advance to the next slide. The projector does offer digital keystone correction, but that is more useful for video than for computer applications.

Most projectors in this class rely on a DLP engine, but the Performa uses three half-inch polysilicon LCD panels. The LCD panels are not so much better, as different. The benefits are better color fidelity and no field breakup; the downside is possible alignment problems with the LCDs, such as we saw with our test unit.

The Performa has 800-by-600 pixels (SVGA) in its native resolution, which is sufficient for PowerPoint presentations and video, but may be a bit crude for some computer applications such as Microsoft Excel. We tested the projector using images generated by DisplayMate (www.displaymate.com), and found that the auto-sync feature worked perfectly, the brightness uniformity looked good, and there were no apparent pixel defects. Response to dark and light grays was excellent, and we saw no apparent ghosting or streaking.

On the other hand, the black level was noticeably bright, focus was soft in the lower left corner, and all shades of gray had a reddish-brown cast to them. Along the left part of the image, the red pixel convergence was off by nearly an entire pixel from green, and more than a pixel from blue. Faint lines were visible in color ramps. With a video signal, facial tones looked a bit blotchy, and there was some stray noise in some video images.

We measured the brightness at 1,305 lumens, which is close to the rated value of 1,500 (and plenty bright for presenting in typical room lighting conditions). Contrast was only fair at 185:1, in part because of the lighter black level, but the brightness variance ratio was good at 1.26:1. The sound system is capable of rather loud volume, but the sound was distorted at higher levels.

If the Performa were the only sub-$900 projector on the market, it might be a better deal. As it is, however, there are other choices available. At this price or slightly higher, you can find models with better image quality and more features, such as the Dell MP1100.

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